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Bread

Corn Bread

A quick oven-baked cornbread made with buttermilk, sweet milk, cornmeal, lard, eggs, sugar, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Corn Bread

Why it works: Buttermilk and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sweeten the buttermilk with sugar.

  3. Beat the eggs (whites and yolks) together.

  4. Pour the sweet milk into the eggs and mix the mixture well.

  5. Add baking soda to the mixture, then add cornmeal and stir until combined.

  6. Melt lard in a pan on the stove.

  7. Pour the melted lard into the batter to grease the pan.

  8. Add salt to the batter and mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the greased pan.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas, helping the cornbread rise.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the bread, giving its characteristic grainy texture.
Buttermilk
Adds tang and moisture, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Lard
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the crumb tender and the pan from sticking.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda to the batter. Baking soda only leavens when it meets an acid such as buttermilk, so it must be mixed in with the acidic batter and baked promptly, or the cornbread will rise poorly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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